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There is a lack of research data about children with disabilities across the range of child and family welfare services. The study reported in this paper explored the extent and nature of disabilities in children in a variety of programmes within OzChild, an Australian welfare agency. Caseworkers and teachers working with children at the beginning of 2012 considered all children receiving services from their programmes. Of these 475 children, 200 were identified as having a disability. This article presents data on these 200 children and recommendations for improving outcomes for them. A major finding was that disability added further layers of complexity to already complex child–carer/family situations presenting to under-resourced practitioners and programmes. There was an extensive variety of disabilities across all programme areas, and varying proportions across programmes ranging from 29 per cent in kinship care and family services to 44 per cent of children in foster care. Data were suggestive of problems with some diagnoses, and the need for further research in these areas. The need to address questions of causation of environmentally based disability through preventative programmes, and a more targeted approach to families with multiple and complex needs were indicated. Lack of respite care was jeopardising some placements of children with severe disability. Lack of educational achievement and participation in social, cultural and recreational activities were identified, as were inequities in funding across different programme areas – all of which resulted in some children with disabilities continuing to be substantially disadvantaged. These data led to the generation of recommendations for changes to practice, programme and policy to improve outcomes for children. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This is the second of a two-part discussion about the development of residential care services in Australia. It contains a review of some of the recent literature on residential care from Australia, the UK, Canada and the USA. It concludes with a look at the major themes and issues that emerge from this literature as well as the service trends and developments canvassed in Part I. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 398 I. The Extensive Use of Poverty Penalties in Comparative Practice 402 A. Fines 403 1. The Use of Fines as a Sanction 403 2. The [...], Fines and other financial sanctions are frequently imposed by criminal justice systems around the world. Yet they also raise grave concerns about economic discrimination. Unless they are perfectly scaled to defendants financial circumstances, they will penalize poor persons far more than rich ones--and poor defendants 'inability to pay can lead to further penalties like imprisonment or additional financial sanctions. These "poverty penalties" have received attention in domestic jurisdictions but are understudied as a global phenomenon. This Article takes up this issue and makes three contributions. First, it demonstrates that poverty penalties are prevalent in criminal justice systems around the world. Second, it shows how poverty penalties came to be overlooked in international human rights law and describes how this is starting to change. Third, the Article makes the normative case for addressing poverty penalties within human rights law and offers suggestions for how this can be achieved.

To back up political claims and advocate for legal rights, individuals often invoke the moral rights that they hold as members of certain groups or social categories. Yet, despite this, [...]

I. Introduction Theories of lawyers' ethics articulate the normative foundations of the lawyer's role, and from those foundations set out the place the lawyer should occupy relative to her clients, [...]